arly transmitted in families
for upwards of two centuries.]

[Footnote 48: Mother Dickenson, as Sir Walter Scott remarks, brings to
mind the magician Queen in the Arabian Tales.]

[Footnote 49: This house is still standing, and though it has
undergone some modernizations, has every appearance of having been
built about this period.]

[Footnote 50: The old barn, so famous as the scene of these exploits,
is no longer extant. A more modern and very substantial one has now
been erected on its site.]

[Footnote 51: Syleing, from the verb sile or syle, to strain, to pass
through a strainer. See Jamieson, under "sile."]

[Footnote 52: Frightened.]

[Footnote 53: Boggard Hole lies in a hollow, near to Hoarstones, and
is still known by that name.]

[Footnote 54: "It is the sport to see the engineer hoist with his own
petar." Her old occupation as witness having got into other hands,
Janet or Jennet Davies, or Device, for the person spoken of appears to
be the same with the grand-daughter of Old Demdike, on whose evidence
three members of her family were executed, has now to take her place
amongst the witnessed against.]

[Footnote 55: Seale, from sele, _s._ a yoke for binding cattle in the
stall. Sal (A.S.) denotes "a collar or bond." Somner. Sile (Isl.)
seems to bear the very same sense with our sele, being exp. a ligament
of leather by which cattle and other things are bound. Vide Jamieson,
under "sele."]

[Footnote 56: Heywood and Broome, in their play, "The late Lancashire
Witches," 1634, 4to, follow the terms of this deposition very closely.
It is very probable that they had seen and conversed with the boy, to
whom, when taken up to London, there was a great resort of company.
The Lancashire dialect, as given in this play, and by no means
unfaithfully, was perhaps derived from conversations with some of the
actors in this drama of real life, a drama quite as extraordinary as
any that Heywood's imagination ever bodied forth from the world of
fiction.

"_Enter Boy with a switch._

_Boy._ Now I have gathered Bullies, and fild my bellie pretty well,
i'le goe see some sport. There are gentlemen coursing in the medow
hard by; and 'tis a game that I love better than going to Schoole ten
to one.

_Enter an invisible spirit. J. Adson[D] with a brace of greyhounds._

What have we here a brace of Greyhounds broke loose from their
masters: it must needs be so, for they have both their Collers and
slippes about their